Wiki re-excision squamous cell carcinoma

[michele1me@yahoo.com]

Hi! Our patient had excision of a skin lesion by her primary care doctor. The path showed squamous cell carcinoma with 2 margins involved.

The patient was referred to us for re-excision. We did this, and the pathology came back negative with no evidence of tumor.

How should I code our portion? Do I use a benign code with history of SCC?

Thanks for your help!

Michele

 

[mitchellde]

you would bill with the SCC because that is what the provider removed. When the path came back indicating positive margins then that meant that the SCC was still present at least at the edges of the defect created by the excision. Your provider then goes in to see if the SCC can be completely removed but taking a bigger portion of the skin around the original defect. When the path came back as normal, that is your indication the your provider was successful in removing all residual areas of the SCC from around the original excision area. So he removed the SCC entirely.